Psychotronics

Psychotronics

The field of psychotronics is the application of technology, specifically arcanotechnology, to emulate the parapsychic abilities of emotional manipulation (empathic projection) telepathy, dream projection (one of the fundamental underpinnings of The CogNet, memory manipulation, mind probing, and ultimately mind control.

Psychotronics has a sister field in psychogenics, which fundamentally is pursuing the exact same fields of study, but do so from a biological perspective. Psychogenics goes hand in hand with cloning and other biosciences as it is focused on using biology rather than attempting to override or replace it.

From Top to Bottom

The biggest limitation of the the CogNet is the hardware required to go fully immersive into the system. Things like S3 rigs, while certainly small enough for home use, are absolutely not mobile, and this flaw is shared by interfaces that use the brutal Wachowski probe, or the heavy and cumbersome Chayefski Sensory Deprivation tank. Mobile systems that use the CogNet are at best only able to 'skim' through the network, with limited interface and a disproportionately heavy strain on the systems bandwidth capabilities. The next iteration of the internet is to take the modern CogNet and remove the hardware, in much the same fashion that cellular phones trumped landline phones, ditching bases and coils of wire and all the rest of the hardware in favor of tiny devices and tower based networks.

The OmniNet

The future of the Cognitive Network is the Omnipresent Network, the OmniNet. The core idea of the OmniNet is to turn every person into a transmitter/receiver in a massive mental network composed of modified brainwaves. These nets are pulled together by psychotron technology based 'towers' that would serve as hubs, connecting large areas to central buffers and processors facilitating an organic flow of data from servers, through towers, and then through energy fields to the people who would be accessing it through their focused thoughts. (Combining the parapsychic paths of Dream Projection, Telepathy, and Mind Control)

The SuperWeapon

The OmniNet has been tested and it has been found to have some interesting problems. Activating the broadcasting towers and associated equipment works perfectly, and a brain to brain network unfolds and stabilizes itself, with computers and AISCs sitting in the center as system controllers. The issue isn't with the hardware, its with the users. All of the people who are incorporated into an OmniNet network are effectively pulled together into a hive mind, a single consciousness composed of the minds of all the people within said network. Concepts of free will, personal independence, and privacy are all blown to bits. Each person is a single part of a now much larger organism, and just as the finger has little say over one human, so does one human have little say over a single gestalt. Like primitive organisms, these OmniNet gestalts dislike foreign bodies, aka humans who are not part of the network, or use the network without being subject to it's conscious will. These 'outsiders' are hunted down and destroyed. Finally, with pure mind to mind contact, there are no secrets between different minds within the network. All of the secrets, sins, prides and joys are all shared. All of them.

The Psychic Dominator

The Dominator is a prototype weapon that when activated creates a localized OmniNet, typically no larger than a medium sized city, or the inner core of a major city. The Dominator has a number of networked L/AISC controllers, so that once the OmniNet is established, the banks of supercomputers in the installation are able to manipulate and control the human gestalt created by their wonder weapon.

A Psychic Dominator requires a central command center that houses the multiple L/AISCs, as well as support staff and personnel who are shielded from the field generated by the OmniNet. This is typically going to be well protected, and given the nature of the system, guarded by nerve stapled clone soldiers, robots, or both. The dominator will require abundant amounts of power to create the free flowing field (as human brains aren't exactly designed to generate signals) and a large antenna to serve as the anchor/field generator. The size of the antenna determines both the range, strength of signal, and intensity of said signal.

Option 1: Large military compounds where the Dominator is an interior structure, likely attached to the CIC. Chance to use big guns is high, as is the potential for stopping said device with mecha, or orbital bombardment

Option 2: built into the upper levels of an existing structure, aka an arcology. A dominator built into an arco can use parts of the building as antenna, and the residents inside are going to be in the strongest affected area of the OmniNet field. Brute force will either end in massive casualties one way or another or military responders and their gear being assimilated into the gestalt.

The In/Voluntary Hive

In the name of efficiency, there are a small number of isolated OmniNet systems that function as the next evolution in supercomputing.